We were curious about Brad’s background and wanted to learn more about his backstory regarding comics. He wrote: “I grew up in Littleton, CO, the suburbs of Denver. I moved around a bunch for college and beyond but ended up settling in Oakland, CA for roughly the past decade now. I work as a freelance illustrator but have been focusing more on my own comics (when life allows) and building my Patreon for the past couple of years. I forget how regular human interaction works.”
He continued: “I first started making comics with my older brother Eric growing up (I have two older brothers and one younger). We had a number of Garfield and Calvin & Hobbes collections and the like, and both liked to doodle. We'd both make our own dumb comics and would even occasionally collaborate, switching off drawing each panel for fun, meandering, improvised comic adventures. Eventually, I made bad comics for the school paper in high school and was an illustrator and comic-maker for my college paper (shoutouts to the Pioneer Log at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR, woo, go Pios). After graduating, I did not use my English or Psychology degrees and I moved to Brooklyn and managed to pay for rent and improv classes (lol) by doing miscellaneous illustration jobs through Craigslist using a used Wacom tablet that I got off of eBay in high school for $35 and a pirated version of Photoshop I had on a dinky emachine netbook.”
“I moved around a bit and eventually a comedy news site that I was illustrating for got bought by a tech news site based out of San Francisco, so I moved to the Bay Area for a regular gig with them. They eventually ran out of money to pay me, but I stuck around in the Bay ANYWAY.”
Later on, Brad told us a story about how he created the website soyourlifeismeaningless.com. He continued by sharing what artists and themes inspired his work.
“I was inspired by artists like KC Green who had Gunshow running at the time, and James Kochalka, who was still doing his daily American Elf diary comics. If 'So Your Life Is Meaningless' wasn't a giveaway, I have also long been inspired by themes of depression and finding things to laugh at whilst dwelling in the 'SHIT', so to speak.”
As an artist, Brad has had his fair share of challenges. He opened up about what interferes with his creative process the most.
“Depression is really an all-consuming trait sometimes, so in addition to being a theme that inspires me, it is also one of the bigger challenges to my creative process. Then there are things like social media sites changing their algorithms to favor short videos over still images, or really anything that involves the marketing side of making comics... I really don't excel at selling myself. It's a wild surprise that I managed to respond to the comment that instigated this lil' post, I'm really terrible at responding to such things,” wrote Brad.
Brad also shared what he would like for people to take away from his comics: “I would like people to laugh at my work. Or at least feel better after reading my comics than they did before reading them. Or if they feel worse, I'd like them to ultimately feel better after ruminating on it for a bit... if that makes sense. I don't know. I would like my compulsion to doodle these things to not be for naught, but I can't really seem to help doing it regardless, so sorry if any of them make your life worse.”
And lastly, Brad added: “I am so grateful to anyone who reads my comics. Even more so to those who leave comments and likes and all that. And if you subscribe to my Patreon, I owe you a whole friggin' hug and a half, and a heartfelt sob from a mysterious stranger at your funeral. I hope these comics help someone, in some capacity, and that I can manage to keep doing them for a while. I'm really grateful for this lil feature too, hoo dang. Thanks for looking at anything I ever drew!”
